CHIOSTRO DEI SANTI MARCELLINO E FESTO

Access from the entrance to the Facoltà di Scienze della Terra (Faculty of Earth Sciences). This vast religious complex is the result of the merger of two Benedictine nunneries. It is built around a magnificent^16th-century cloister with lush vegetation and marble and piperno fountains. Its portico is interrupted on one side by a terrace that once offered a vast panorama of the sea (today, the view is blocked by other buildings). On a lower level is theOratorio della Scala Santa (1772): designed by Luigi Vanvitelli (the architect of Caserta's Reggia), the oratory features an elegant, scenographic facade with a double staircase overlooking a garden, a sort of cloister within a cloister. From the main cloister, you can also access the church of Saints Marcellino and Festo, rebuilt in the 17th^century and enriched by^18th-century polychrome marble decoration. The former conventual buildings now house the Department of Earth Sciences of the University of Naples, as well as the Museo di Paleontologia e di Geologia, where an important collection of fossils (skull ofElephas antiquus, a prehistoric elephant; a complete fossil palm; an insect encased in amber) and a skeleton of allosaurus, a carnivorous dinosaur from the same group as tyrannosaurus, are on display. A visit that will appeal to young and old alike... for a change from churches!